


The Birth of Venus

by MamaButts



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Creation, Gen, Jasper is born, set in the kindergarten
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 06:43:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12293481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MamaButts/pseuds/MamaButts
Summary: Jasper is born one warm kindergarten evening.





	The Birth of Venus

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Tiger Bomb Zine that was never published and I'm releasing it here!

Consciousness was a capricious thing. One moment, there was nothing. A void, an empty construct nestled into a crevice of stifling, deep rock. Quiet. The pupa of a geological hive was still tucked away in her honeycomb.

Then the spark. Like a universe igniting from subatomic implosion, a single consciousness burst forth and was _created_ in that moment. Everything she was, everything she could be coalesced into an entity where once there was nothing, nothing at all. And she had a name, a voice, a purpose. She was Jasper, a soldier of Pink Diamond, and she was born of this planet to fight. She knew all of this and more from the moment of her inception, as the data had already been scribed into her being. Like a cast bursting seamlessly from the mold, like the perfectly placed brush stroke across the canvas, Jasper existed as a perfect piece of art, given life through her creator’s flawless vision.

Her diamond. Her diamond made her. Somewhere deep in the ground, Jasper’s gem glowed at the thought. The light was bright, yet muffled in the womb of compacted earth.

It felt wrong to remain there, buried far from the drone of the rest of her hive. Away from her diamond and her purpose and the colony that she belonged to.

_Form, form, form._

Jasper remembered now. Her form had to extend from her core—it had a head, two arms, two legs. She was supposed to have all of these things and yet she was not sure how to obtain them. Her energy flickered and flexed. It tested the boundaries of her shell. How to crack it, how to free herself?

With a surge of blind power, Jasper released her energy in all directions. It soaked into the pores and cracks of the surrounding rock, bullying its way through every avenue it could find. For a moment, she was sure it would work. That much power was bound to do something. It expanded and grew enormous and then—

Her energy fizzled out. It did nothing but heat the ground that entombed her gem.

So the first attempt didn’t work.

Neither did the second.

Energy depleted with each endeavor. Every effort drained her core’s energy; every failed attempt added to Jasper’s frustration. She should be able to _do_ this. She had to form. Couldn’t stay here forever.

The struggles of her first moments of life were lonely and frantic, yet driven by instinct. Exhausting. Blind and wriggling her way from her crucible, Jasper clawed at a chance to form her body with the desperation of a suffocating creature. How much time did she have trapped in here? What if she depleted herself of energy and drowned here in this rock and they only found her months later, stillborn?

But she wanted it. She wanted, she wanted that form. Wanted to take the first breath and cry her feral war song to her sisters and her diamond to let them know that she had made it into the world.

She needed all those parts. She tried to imagine each one. Head, arms, legs, torso, face, hands, feet, fingers, lips, eyes, and—

The core burst. Her energy grasped at atoms to materialize shapes in light, then flesh. She grew so fast and with such pressure that it liquefied her sandstone cradle in all directions. Vaporous steam and plasma churned all around her with a roar that could be heard for miles in all directions. It sounded like a warrior’s bellow. The explosion cracked the earth at its weakest point. She could feel it there—soft ground where lava now oozed.

The eruption was violent from the outside. Rocks flung across the Kindergarten and showered over the heads of hive workers below. They crashed into the adjacent walls, chipping off pieces of the canyon with ease. It was a frightening display that sounded like a bomb had gone off below ground and looked like a volcanic tantrum. Even in the evening dim light, the glow of molten rock purged through the seams of the exit point. A curtain of silken smoke billowed high into the air. It smelled of sulfur and iron.

The birth of a gem. A big one at that, judging by the immensity of the display thus far. To a kindergartener, it was a sight to behold and it was not long before a sizable group gathered to watch it happen.

Jasper flexed her physical form to test her boundaries. She had conjured a thick and powerful physical manifestation—she moved through the murky liquid rock with relative ease. Syrupy heat encased her on all sides. It mingled with her hair and seeped its way into her mouth when she took an instinctive breath. Magma gushed into her lungs. It burned, yes, but it was nothing compared to Jasper’s intrinsic heat. Her voice rumbled like thunder around the remnants of her amnion as she laughed for the mere delight of life, of having a form.

Her laugh echoed through the Kindergarten and shook those canyon walls.

A hand, barbed with a claw on each finger, erupted from the shell of rock that remained and scattered debris. It groped at the crumbling wall for purchase. Scrabbled as chunks broke off and sank into the sop of lava. Finally claws dug into stable rock. And then Jasper began to drag herself forward.

Another hand broke through, this time followed by a head. Her hair was alive with glowing heat, but her eyes shone even brighter when she opened them for the first time upon her colony. Jasper coughed the amniotic magma from her lungs, froth and foam belching from her parted lips. Her head reared back on her shoulders as she turned her face toward her planet’s waning sun. Her chest gave a mighty heave and she took her first gasp of atmosphere. First breath.

Below, more kindergarteners crowded for the display. They watched Jasper surge forth, her biceps quivering as she lugged the rest of her body from her rapidly melting crevice. She pulled her torso free, and then her hips. Lava slopped across the canyon with every thrash of her arms, every toss of her great mane. It dripped down her chin like juice from a sun-ripened peach. She huffed and grunted. Twisted and lurched. It was not pretty, nor graceful, but it was impressive in the same way a serpent devouring a deer whole was impressive. She came forth a soldier; she came forth fighting.

When it was all over and Jasper rested on her hands and knees in a pool of afterbirth, the smell of sulfur lingering in the air, the Kindergarten grew quiet once more. The sound of explosions and calamity in the distance were Jasper’s lullaby as she regained her strength. Her planet’s sun beat down on her back and she soaked it in for as long as they let her.

The sound of another gem approaching made her look up. It was a peridot. She carried an axe that was bigger than her own body and offered it to Jasper.

Jasper took it. Weighed it in one hand. It felt good.

They sent her towards the sound of explosions. Ushered her off and told her she knew what to do.

She did.

She went forth a soldier; she went forth fighting.


End file.
